“Research In Motion Ltd., the maker of Blackberry smartphones, said Friday its chief marketing officer Keith Pardy has decided to leave the company for personal reasons,” Phred Dvorak reports for The Wall Street Journal.
MacDailyNews Take: iPad 2, killer.
Dvorak reports, “RIM, based in Waterloo, Ontario, said Mr. Pardy will continue to help the company over a six-month transition period. The departure comes weeks ahead the expected roll-out of RIM’s PlayBook tablet, one of the most significant product launches in the company’s history.”
MacDailyNews Take: PlayBook? PlayDead is more like it. Except RIM won’t be faking that.
Read more in the full article here.
In a companion WSJ article, Dave Kansas reports, “PlayBook will arrive after iPad 2’s launch, which came with much ballyhoo – including a surprise appearance from Steve Jobs – earlier this week. The lower price point for the sleeker iPad 2 is already causing havoc for Motorola Mobility, maker of the already released Xoom. Its shares are down from a high of 36.34 in January to 26.55 today.”
Kansas reports, “Mr. Pardy says he will spend six months in a transition period, but his departure on the eve of the PlayBook launch is rattling investors today.”
MacDailyNews Take: Blood in the water. The fleeing has begun. Shares of RIM are currently down 3%.
Wouldn’t it be refreshing to hear, “Our product is shit. We had a good ride with the Blackberry, but we are farm league.”
Ouch.
…”Wouldn’t it be refreshing to hear, “Our product is shit….”
He likely quite because that is EXACTLY what he wanted, but couldn’t, say…
He probably got too stressed out about the impossible task of marketing vapor PlayBook against the reality of iPad 2. A no-win scenario. He chose NOT to “play.”
I find it very strange that investors are being rattled by the marketing guy leaving. It’s not like he’s the only one at RIM handling the marketing. I’m pretty sure he’s not calling journalists, placing ads himself, designing the web page, etc.
It’s also funny that he’s leaving “on the eve of the launch”. Um, has an actual launch date been set?
eve |ēv|
noun
the day or period of time immediately before an event or occasion
The “boss” of marketing leaving so suddenly could mean there is an internal dispute about (or difficulty with) how to position and sell an upcoming product. Or it could be totally unrelated to PlayBook. I don’t think it takes too much to “rattle” RIMM investors these days.
Obviously wasn’t exactly bRIMming with enthusiasm for the product.
RIM’s desperately needing press and internet hits. Lacking anything meaningful about products to report, they are now throwing people to the sharks one at a time for daily relevancy. 😉
Winning!
Showing people magic!
Pardy can see the world-historic embarrassment coming. In order to have a salvageable career, he must perform the technicality of leaving before the official launch.
hmm… Phred Dvorak reporting for the WSJ. Name sounds very suspicious.
I was going to jokingly suggest it might be Fred Mertz spoofing John Dvoark. But, seems like it isn’t that fun – Phred Dvorak seems to be a regular contributor at the WSJ:
http://online.wsj.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=PHRED+DVORAK&bylinesearch=true
It’s RIM and HP that will keep Apple on their toes in the coming years.
The Playbook and TouchPad will make the Apple products better for us all. Hardware and software integration are not optional anymore.
Microsoft and Google are already sucking wind in the face of the Verizon iPhone 4, the iPad 2, and the Mac lineup. All have ecosystems, all have hardware and software integration, and all have class leading design and materials.
No, APPLE will keep Apple on its toes in the coming years, as always.
Has anybody outside RIMM actually used a Playbook? I see they have given demos at events, but has it actually been used by somebody NOT trained to avoid its weaknesses or parts of its user experience that are complete? I find it hard to believe that this product is going to ship anytime soon, and if it does, it is going to be a complete mess.
“Smoke on the water, fire in the sky”
Deep Purple said it all. 🙂
Apple is going to let all it’s rivals fall all over themselves scrambling like Samsung announced today (to revamp Galaxy Tab) for the next months to a year to address iPad 2 then when they’ve sweated and are all ready….
Steve “here’s iPad 3 with retina display, iOS 5… ” and see them collapse again.
“Motorola Mobility…shares are down from a high of 36.34 in January to 26.55 today.”
That’s a drop of approximately 27% in about two months. In Wall Street, that’s considered a free fall. It appears that we have two ways to make money in the stock market – buy APPL or short its would-be competitors before their next “iOS killer” product release.
Playbook is DOA:
– QNX was originally designed for plugged-in devices (like car nav systems) not mobile. Bad battery life. That’s why it’s still not on Blackberry phones.
– Playbook requires Blackberry tether to work fully. No native PIM apps like email.
– No apps. Trying to port Android apps (with their malware) and run them in performance sapping emulation mode (original idea to run them natively kabooshed by Oracle patent threats)
– 6 months since announcement still not shipping points to massive undisclosed problems.
– price. Rim has yet to state price so it’s probably going to be more expensive than iPad 2.
It’s going to be interesting to see what comes of the Blackberry and the Playbook. Apple is opening up its very 1st Apple Store outside of a major metropolitan market…guess where? Waterloo…right in RIM’s backyard…and it looks as big or bigger than the Toronto stores
In your face RIM! Eh!
I wonder if Lazaridis and Balsillie will hang out at the Rogers and Bell phone stores with free concert tickets?
“Blood in the water and Fire in the sky.
Blood in the water.”
Has a familiar ring to it.
Be nice, the poor guy is having a hart attack.
According to Nielsen RIM has the same market share as Apple, not exactly a sinking ship.
And Android is now more than Apple. I thought the Verizon iPhone was going to change all that….. guess not.
what YOU thought don’t matter 1 bit! RIM had no real competition before iPhone & android and is taking hits. Let’s say it’s ship is leaking, wait & see…
“what YOU thought don’t matter 1 bit!”
1 bit…..
Good lord.